Development of a Scalable Annealing Machine Dedicated to Integer Factoring

Commercial annealing machines such as D-Wave and Fujitsu necessarily features general-purpose programmability to cover as wide area of combinatorial optimization problems and thus to obtain as much markets as possible. On the contrary, research annealing machines can enjoy freedom to specialize in a specific problem and to investigate the optimal calculation method to maximum extent. We call this approach Application Specific Annealing Circuit (ASAC). We chose integer factoring as the first target application in our ASAC research. Integer factoring is accomplished by reverse-directional calculation of a digital multiplier circuit by expressing the logic circuit as an energy function and by finding the minimum energy state using annealing method. We have developed a scalable classical ASAC machine using commercial electronic components as a proof of concept. We call our experimental machine AIST Analog Annealer (AAA). We are going to introduce this machine in our presentation.